Donmar Warehouse, London
Nina Hoss stars in a kookily immersive production but the devastating hammer blow of the Russian tragicomedy is not lost in translation

It is initially hard to fathom where Benedict Andrews’ conspicuously kooky take on Anton Chekhov’s final drama is going. Actors come on looking like modern-day eccentrics and festivalgoers rather than Russian aristocrats of an ancient regime giving way to the new.

They swear, vape and address us directly as they play out the fate of a bored, profligate landed family led by a glamorous matriarch, Ranevskaya (Nina Hoss), who returns home from her Parisian misadventures to continue the party, despite growing debt and the prospective sale of her centuries-old estate.

Cliffs Pavilion, Southend
The standup delivers an unstructured show with autobiographical anecdotes and routines about henpecked husbands and women called Fanny

How hard should a comedian try when they’re already a household name? Some still go the extra yard: Peter Kay on his last tour , for example. Some – such as Romesh Ranganathan – turn on cruise control, but are at least cruising at high altitude. And for some, there is a drop-off. John Bishop promises a show proper after the interval of Back at It, whose first half is “the mess-about bit”. But there’s not much structure or significance in Act Two either, nor are the jokes good enough to compensate.

That’s not to say audiences won’t enjoy the scouser’s shtick: it’s personable enough, and tickles in places that many like to be tickled. There are jokes about how henpecked Bishop is in his marriage, some of which feel, as he rages on about “fucking compromises”, uncomfortably emphatic. There’s material about his midlife crisis and his wife’s menopause. (Sample gag: “that woman you thought had a hot body really has a hot body.”) There are jokes about a woman being called Fanny and about how ill-at-ease Bishop was about snogging Ian McKellen in a panto .

Touring until 3 April

The pair, whose final season of the hit horror-comedy will air on the BBC this month, say the West End production will feature familiar characters and fresh surprises

As the ninth and final series of their BBC hit Inside No 9 begins this month, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have announced a new stage version of the show for the West End next year.

The pair will star in Inside No 9 Stage/Fright which will feature familiar characters and fresh surprises or, in their words, “something old, something new, something butchered and something … boo!”. They added: “We want to deliver the perfect West End night at the theatre … we might even crack out a song if you’re lucky.”

Yard theatre, London
Even in times of peace, the medical staff training to go into a war zone can’t avoid conflict in Sami Ibrahim’s engaging play

Questions of crisis spiral in Sami Ibrahim ’s thoughtful but strangely paced play. There is the personal strife of mediator Nicki ( Mariah Louca ); the political disasters that joker Dan (Peter Corboy) can’t tear his eyes from in the news; and the crisis of care that threatens to ruin the reputation of the organisation for which the four characters work. In a bland meeting room, this group of medical staff is training to offer humanitarian aid in war zones. But how can they expect to manage around active conflict if they can barely survive a few weeks together in peace?

Jaz Woodcock-Stewart’s production has short, fragmentary scenes, headache-inducing beats and snippets of hypothetical situations in which the participants are pushed closer to admitting they can’t handle what they have signed up for. These conversations get deep quickly, but it’s the lighter, incidental chats during the breaks that reveal most about their characters, as grieving Khaled (Luca Kamleh Chapman) and fixer-upper Sarah (Rosa Robson) grow closer, and Dan – unfairly picked on by the others – accidentally learns about Nicki’s troubles. These soft moments of connection are gracefully done; tiny glances of awkwardness, little seeds of growing trust.

Lowry, Salford
Jack Godfrey’s witty show is about a lovable dreamer who took flight in a garden chair attached to helium balloons

‘What makes a man try to fly in a lawn chair?” sing the ensemble of Jack Godfrey’s new musical. Why would someone attach 42 (or maybe 43) helium-filled weather balloons to a chair and float high above Los Angeles? And why would anyone want to write a musical about it?

42 Balloons, directed by Ellie Coote, offers a convincing answer to that last question. Larry Walters, or Lawnchair Larry as he became known after taking flight in 1982, is an odd true-life subject. But Godfrey approaches this quirky story with empathy, wit and self-awareness, telling a charming tale of implausible dreams – and what happens when you finally achieve them.

At the Lowry, Salford , until 19 May

Speaking at launch for West End adaptation, Cleese complains about literal-minded viewers ‘not playing with a full deck’

John Cleese said that he decided to cut the N-word from a scene in his West End Fawlty Towers revival because in contemporary Britain there are too many “literal minded people” who “don’t understand irony”.

Cleese was speaking at the media launch for the West End theatrical adaptation of the classic comedy, which follows a repressed hotelier trying to control his chaotic staff. The TV show finished in 1979 after two series that are widely regarded to contain some of the best-ever British sitcom writing.

Soho theatre, London
A lesser act might have struggled to follow the brilliant Sydnee Washington, but Faustin’s swaggering, gossipy shtick is superb

Has Marie Faustin blundered? Support acts are supposed to be warmup funny, not red-hot funny. Faustin’s NYC pal Sydnee Washington is red hot here, and 10 minutes in, one wonders whether Faustin might play second fiddle at her own show. It’s a measure of her ability, and confidence, that Faustin raises the comic temperature still further after Washington’s set, with a thoroughly irresistible hour on ageing, gossip and relationships v “situationships”. She makes a stellar impression: it’s hard to imagine a personality more obviously – infectiously, gloriously – cut out for standup comedy.

Does that mean she has a coherent show? Not really, but no one minds. Are all her jokes well worked? Certainly not. Several anecdotes (the one about triggering a bomb scare at a bus station; the one about auditioning for a Maybelline ad) fizzle out where one might expect a climax. But when the journey’s as much fun as this, who cares about the destination? Faustin takes enormous pleasure in her stories, animating them with self-ridiculous swagger, sassy stylings and phraseology, and the most contagious mwa-hah-hah laugh in comedy.

Barbican, London
In ragged rocksteps and snaredrum springs, choreographer Kenrick Sandy and composer Michael Asante catch the connections between sound and movement

Founded in 2001, Boy Blue is a close and enduring partnership between choreographer Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and composer Michael “Mikey J” Asante, and has been a major player in the 21st-century ascendance of hip-hop dance theatre. Their latest piece returns the duo – here joined by Jade Hackett as associate choreographer – to their own roots, focusing intensely on those two alchemical elements that, when put together, can produce choreographic gold: dance and music.

The framework for Cycles is deceptively simple, a kind of tracklist of separate numbers, each initiated by a change of music, each developing distinct dance moods and motifs, and each lit by spotlights and searchlights that might here suggest a turntable, there a distant star. The costumes are strange hybrids of sci-fi, streetwear and desert robes, transmuting under the lights from ice-white to space-grey to burnished yellow.

Kim Tatum, Mariah Louca and Reece Lyons combine to call for trans women to be put on an equal footing for cis roles

Kim Tatum dreams of playing Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard’s exquisite former star of silent films. Mariah Louca longs to perform as Dangerous Liaisons’ evil schemer Marquise de Merteuil. And for Reece Lyons, it’s the monstrous ambition of Lady Macbeth that makes her the ideal role. But, until attitudes within British theatre shift, it’s unlikely these talented performers will get to play their dream characters. Despite their skill, training and accolades, trans women just don’t seem to get cast in cisgender roles.

“I have never seen a trans woman on stage play a mother or a love interest,” Offie-award-winning Lyons says. “Why don’t we come to mind for that?” Lyons is sitting on a low couch in a light-streamed room across from Tatum and Louca. Frustrated with the constant obstacles they face in the industry, the three actors are calling for trans women to be put on an equal footing for cis roles.